


Thoroughly Imagined, Inarguably Real

by goodnicepeople



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: F/M, Gen, Spoilers for finale, tagged for death but nothing happens onscreen, the afterlife
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-18
Updated: 2017-08-18
Packaged: 2018-12-16 18:46:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 862
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11834787
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/goodnicepeople/pseuds/goodnicepeople
Summary: When Magnus was watching Julia from afar - watching her sweep out the front door, tools under her arm - Magnus was eighty-four years old.Magnus was eighty-four and breathless when her eyes locked with his, from a distance. And by the time he was in her arms, or she was in his, he is not quite thirty.





	Thoroughly Imagined, Inarguably Real

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers for the finale (episode 69) my dear friends!
> 
> Thanks for going on this journey with me, everyone. You've so patiently put up with my maudlin machinations about mortality and family, I hope you can abide one last one.
> 
> Also, I was about to say this can be read as a follow-up to [Patterns of Migration](http://archiveofourown.org/works/10709301?view_full_work=true), but this is not... un-canon now? So! Take it as you will.

When Magnus was watching Julia from afar - watching her sweep out the front door, tools under her arm - Magnus was eighty-four years old. Eighty-four and happily lived in, his body fine, sturdy flatware, despite loving wear and tear. His body a hearth with dark marks that can’t be scrubbed out any longer, where fire licked strong and heavy for too long. A good, solid chair, the kind that only gets better with use, with the dedicated press and weight of a regular occupant.

Magnus was eighty-four and breathless when her eyes locked with his, from a distance. And by the time he was in her arms - or she was in his, it’s worthless trying to tell, to parse two equal forces of nature - he is not quite thirty. Older than Julia had ever known him on the prime material plane. She is exactly as he remembered, and better, too, somehow. The gorgeous round bloom of her face, the wiry brown fury that follows her with every step, every gesticulation, big, wild hair like a halo. They disappear inside, full of life, in a way that feels thoroughly imagined but inarguably real. The way that sunlight has a presence when it’s filtered through dust, through a curtain of yellow leaves.

He lives full lifetimes with her. He lives only minutes. Time passes so strangely; eons in the time it takes for his hand to pass over the shell of her ear, lovingly stroking back her hair. Magnus will think, her eyes are so golden at sunset, and suddenly it’s sunset. As many sunsets as they want. As many dark, quiet evenings as they want, too, falling back into their wedding bed. The very one Magnus carved long before Julia had ever accepted his proposal.

When their dogs begin barking one morning - morning, they only know, from the way dew clings to windowpanes - they huddle in the doorframe. Peering out into a bright, windless day. An older man stands many paces away, with the vaguely tensed confusion of someone who finds themselves suddenly alone. Hunched shoulders. Long hands wringing a familiar nervous pattern into a blue hat.

“Julia,” Magnus begins, thinking of too many things to say at once.

Perhaps the man hears Magnus’ voice. Or perhaps they appear to him - the house, the dogs, the concerned faces - all at once, in that instant. But as Angus turns to see them, years slough off him, and he is barely fifty. And he gasps, “Magnus!” and is thirty. And darts to him, flinging open a wrought iron gate, just like he would when he returned from his schooling. Just like he would every time Magnus waited for him, just like this, in the warm, open mouth of a doorway. In a home. His home. Their home.

He leaps into Magnus’ arms. A long-forgotten and all too familiar feeling. The weightless space - the pins-and-needles in between - before Magnus scoops him up, up against his broad, warm chest. A dinner plate, a hearth, a rocking chair. Spun in a joyous circle, the both of them whooping like children.

Angus drinks Magnus in first. It is hard not to remember him old and feeble. Such is the curse of living a long life beside someone; you don’t forget their healthy, hale days, their warm smile, but much more presently you remember their last ones, too. The faculties lost. The cold weight of a body in a bed in your own home without a fire burning inside it.

Magnus is young, like when they’d first met. Angus laughs, giddy with the realization, and looks down at his own hands braced on Magnus’ shoulders.

Angus takes stock, in the way he always reflexively, easily notes all new things. Touches his nose, his chin, his chest. Frowns, almost apologetic, with the sudden realization of his own age. The way his thin, knobby ankles barely meet around the back of Magnus, where Angus sits comfortably on his hip. A child again. What he’d railed so furiously against the entire time he’d been one, traversing across what felt like a minefield of ache and disregard. Wishing to be taller, faster, older. Anything to earn him attention, solidity, respect.

Magnus grins at him like he’d expected this, wholly unabashed and unsurprised. Like this moment has been happening for an eternity. Which it has, in a way. Magnus always there with arms outstretched, Angus always in the too-fast sprawling leap towards him. Angus reaches towards a feeling that has already dissipated, not quite closing his fist around a thought which disintegrates to evade his grasp: you should be embarrassed, you’re no child. But he isn’t. Can’t bring himself to feel it. And if he is a child, he’s Magnus’, and he’d missed it terribly, terribly. Magnus’ mouth pulls back in a sloppy grin, revealing his chipped tooth, which Angus had missed so sharply, so dearly.

“This is - ” Magnus begins.

“I know,” Angus says.

“I know,” Julia echoes, just behind him. An eternity passes in the time it takes for all three of them to smile so big it shows all their teeth, to wrinkle their eyes. And it’s just a moment. Of many, many more.


End file.
